


Do no harm

by spiderfire



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Desperation, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Medical Professionals, Medical Trauma, POV Original Character, civilian deaths, off screen death of children
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once you join Hydra, there is really no way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bienfilatre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bienfilatre/gifts).



There was no escape, not now. The overwhelming press of bills, the music lessons for his kids, the mortgage. He couldn’t quit. Not anymore. He told himself that it was his choice that he stayed. He chose to stay for his family. Probably, though, he never could have left. Once he had been brought in the inner circle, once he had learned what he knows now, they would not have let him go. He’d have had a visitor in the dead of night, a visitor who moved silently. A flash of liquid metal and it would be over for him. 

He had been happy. The post-doc he landed a decade and a half ago was a chance of a lifetime. In that excitement that he proposed to his girlfriend. A year later, the post-doc gave way to a tenure track position at a government research lab and his wife told him she was pregnant. The delight they took in their new baby, in each of his published papers, in their new house, in a little sister to their eldest, were all real and treasured memories. 

Once he had been convinced he was doing the right thing. He was making the world a safer place for future generations, for his children. He was finding a way for seven billion people to live on a planet that had a carrying capacity of one. He was defying the odds of for families like his, he was providing for his kids, for his wife. He was doing the man’s work and it felt good. 

But something along the way had gone wrong. He did not know what. 

Even now, most of the time it was not so bad. His kids made him laugh, he delighted at their accomplishments as they mastered multiplication, as they played piano, as they fought and made up and insisted on hugs every night. He and his wife would walk the dog each morning, watching as the snowy egrets took off over the bay. He enjoyed his work and he still believed he was doing the right thing, the good thing, in the long run. 

But then there were days like today. Days when he wanted to call the _Post_ and tell them what he knew. Days when he wanted to walk out on his wife and kids, because if they only knew the truth, they’d never want to look at him again, and it was better for them to remember him as the man he pretended to be instead of the monster he knew himself to be. 

He leaned heavily on the sink as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. He was not young anymore. There were lines around his eyes and his hair was streaked with grey. He looked tired. Grimly, he bent over and began to scrub the blood from his nails.


	2. January 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you are a doctor for STRIKE, just what does "do no harm" mean? When he took the vow, it seemed clear enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> un-beta'ed - written in a couple hour angry binge

The men stood in line, waiting for him to check them out. He was quick. Eyes. Heart. Lungs. And then they held out their arms and he filled the long needle with AFM-87 and slid it into their basilic vein. By the time he was done with the next man, the previous man's pupils had constricted and he held his body with rigid expectation. The captain went last. 

“Mission?” he asked. 

He always did this, prompting the captain before they went out. He did not know why this was protocol. Surely, the captain knew what he was doing. 

“The apartment building on 18th and 27th. There’s a man who lives there that we are to take out. It’s to look like an accident.” 

The doctor nodded. That lined up with the mission parameters he had been given. “Do you need drugs?” he asked. In the past, they had occasionally given a target a cocktail that metabolized fast, but left them in asystole. 

“No,” the captain replied.

He did not press. Truth be told, he did not really want to know what they were going to do. 

***

“Doc!” a man’s voice bellowed. “Doc, we need you!” 

His head snapped up from the tablet he had been studying. A new med that biochem wanted tested in the field, but he was not convinced. The delusional side effects that that class of drug was known for was contraindicated for field. He was skeptical. 

There was quite a commotion down the hall as, what sounded like, the entire STRIKE team poured through the infirmary door. Dropping the tablet on his desk, he shoved his glasses up on his nose and ran out. One, two, three, four men had crowded into the small space. They stunk of sweat and gunpowder and blood and testosterone. One of them, a kid by the name of…Ozack? He was not sure. Anyway, he was sprawled on the exam table and the captain hovered over him. The kid was in a bad way. He was pale. His breathing was rapid and shallow. The lower half of his body had been burned. His clothing was still faintly smoking and the exposed skin ranged from angry red to black and dead. 

The doctor took one more look around at the other STRIKE members. None of them seemed badly hurt. Grabbing a crash cart and pulling it across the floor with him, he ordered, “Everyone out. Agent…uh,” he looked wildly around until he found the STRIKE member with the medic’s insignia on his shoulder. “You,” he said, pointing. 

“Reynolds, sir.” 

“Yeah, Agent Reynolds. Get cleaned up and get back here. The rest of you, out.” 

The other members of the team started to move but the Captain stayed standing over Ozack. The doctor turned on him. “I said out!” 

“I’m not leaving him.” 

The doctor took a breath and stood up straight, pulling all five feet four inches of his frame erect. The captain was at least eight inches taller than him but, he had been a trauma doctor for over a decade. “Captain,” he said calmly and firmly. “I can’t work when you are here. Get. Out.” 

And the captain relented. They always did. Turning to his patient he surveyed the damage. Partial and full thickness burns to the inferior ventral extremities. In places, the soldier’s armor had melted and partially fused to his flesh. Shrapnel had grazed his legs and there was one spot where a chunk of metal was protruding from the muscles. The soldier was staring at him with terrified eyes. Grabbing a knife from the crash kit, he started to cut away the armor and clothes. 

Talking as he worked, he said, “Your name is Ozack?” 

“Yes,” the soldier gasped. 

“We’re going to fix you up, agent. You understand?” 

“Yes sir,” he said. 

“Can tell me what happened?”

“Canister,” Ozack gasped, “exploded.” 

Reynolds came running back into the room, his armor gone, his hair still dripping, wearing a set of clean scrubs. The doctor looked up. “Oh, good,” he said. “Start an IV, would you?” 

“Sure,” Reynolds replied, gathering up the saline and the needle and the tape. “I tried to start one in the van, but the captain was driving like a bat out of hell.” 

The doctor kept working on removing the clothes, trying to visualize the wounds. “How many amphetamines did he have?” 

Reynolds laughed but the sound was low and angry. “Too many,” he said. “I told him to lay off….” 

“I….energy…,” said Ozack. 

“Yeah, well, that was a stupid move, kid. I have to neutralize them before I can deal with your leg.” 

Reynolds hooked the IV bag on a stand. “Got it,” he said. 

The doctor glanced at him and then back at the wounds. “Push the saline,” he said. “Get 350 mg of SDT-127 into him. And then type and cross two pints of blood.” 

“Yes sir,” Reynolds replied. 

Later, when Ozack was stabilized, he sent Reynolds off to see to the rest of the team. After another hour of work, the doctor sat on a stool and watched his patient from across the infirmary. The floor around the exam table was littered with blood soaked rags. Instruments were strewn across several trays. But Ozack was alive. The kid was breathing slowly and regularly. They had poured in the sedatives to counteract the stimulants that he had been on, just to get his heart rate down to a reasonable level. Then he had pumped in pain killers, antibiotics, anti-inflamatories, human growth serum, and a lot more. He’d keep his legs but even with the experimental regenerative Creel treatments, he was going to have a hell of a collection of scars. 

The doctor was exhausted, but it he still had three hours left on his shift. Wearily, he clicked on the TV to listen to the news while he cleaned up the mess. 

A reporter was standing in front of a smoking ruin. Dozens of fire trucks had their ladders extended and were spraying water on the smoldering remains. Blue flashes from the spinning lights of police cars lit up the spray. “…No, Ted,” the reporter was saying. “At this point, the fire marshall is saying that the fire was accidental…” 

“And let’s hope it stays that way,” the captain said from the doorway, “or Garrett is going to have my teeth.” 

The doctor looked at the captain. He was cleaned up, in a fresh set of civvies. On the TV, the reporter was saying, “Thank you Jamie. For those of you just joining us, there was a six alarm fire in an eighteen unit downtown apartment complex late tonight. Of the approximately sixty residents, fourteen were killed including nine children, who, it seems, were having a slumber party in one of the basement units.” 

“Did you get him?” the doctor asked the captain. 

“Huh?” said the doctor. 

“The man. Did you get him.”

“Oh,” the captain replied. “Of course.”

The doctor said nothing. One thing one learned working for Hydra was keeping your mouth shut. However, he could not help but think about his own two girls. At this time of night they should be curled up in their beds. Janet, the older one, was a morning person. She’d be up in an hour or two, taking a shower and getting ready for school. Tracy was the younger one. Getting her up was like resurrecting the dead. No sooner did he think that than he flinched, but, she did hate to get up in the morning. She may be only twelve, but she already had the teenager sleep-to-noon thing going.

The day he stopped coming to work. The day he spilled the beans. He knew there would be a story on the news. _Tragic death of a family of four._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you bienfilatre for all your encouragement! (Sorry this is so bleak!) 
> 
> I may continue to develop this character. We'll see!


End file.
